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Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

gcc.gnu.org

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Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#271

Post by dllthomas »

gress wrote: post #260
undershirt wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's confusing if you think about it in terms of developer freedom, which the GPL isn't written for. It's about a user's freedom to run, study, modify, and distribute software however they want. It's this seed of freedom that prevents software from controlling the users. That's what the GPL protects. So your objection to the GPL is essentially that it doesn't grant you the freedom to take away these user rights.

Isn't a user who modifies and distributes software otherwise known as a developer ?

No, because they might be paying someone else to do the development.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#272

Post by gress »

dllthomas wrote: post #271
gress wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't a user who modifies and distributes software otherwise known as a developer ?

No, because they might be paying someone else to do the development.

So this is about protecting the rights of people rich enough to hire developers to work on bespoke projects that cannot be distributed as proprietary. I.e. Large corporations.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#273

Post by dllthomas »

guscost wrote: post #232
Avshalom wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPL/Four Freedoms more or less rejects the distinction between developer and user.

That seems to make about as much sense as rejecting the distinction between cooking chicken and eating it.

I put chicken on my plate. I taste it. It is not salty enough. I add some salt.

Obviously, we wouldn't call this "cooking chicken", but I'm participating in the creation of my final meal. We can add arbitrarily more, arbitrarily complex steps and ingredients.

It totally makes sense to say, "this person is developing software" or "this person is cooking chicken". What is rejected is the notion that eating the chicken means you're not taking any role in shaping it except those roles explicitly given to you.

When I make boxed macaroni and cheese, I add nutmeg, and the result is way better. It's a good thing I have access to enough of the guts of the recipe to make that change (... or maybe it would be better if I ate less boxed macaroni and cheese, but I think you follow the metaphor).

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#274

Post by NAFV_P »

gress wrote: post #264
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a common misconception amongst software developers, but in fact its not your freedom that's being defended, its the users of software. So let's rephrase that: Interesting that preventing users from doing something with a bit of software (e.g. selling non-free derivatives) is considered restricting freedom. Kind of self evident when stated from the users point of view really.

What 'users' of clang and gcc are not developers?

> What 'users' of clang and gcc are not developers?

I use gcc, and I work as a treesurgeon.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#275

Post by kevin_bauer »

fleitz wrote: post #249
drcube wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confounding issues here. RMS is in the position of a critic of the US government, rightly claiming that, while your country is "free", it installs and supports dictatorships all over the world. It is possible to be unfree, and not support other dictatorships, like Cuba. It is possible to be both unfree, and support dictatorships, like the USSR. RMS's goal with GCC, is to be like the mythical free country that…

Except the the claim he is making is that free software is fundamentally different than open source. "The values of free software are fundamentally different from the values of open source, which make "better code" the ultimate goal." Perhaps you could provide quotes where RMS in the article says that clang is 'free software'. According to RMS in the article clang is a major set back for free software. (because it's…

Interesting! The last time i looked, almost 100% of all compiled software of the linux-franchise was gcc-compiled, even a large portion of iOS and android software is gcc-compiled, and it doesn't stop there!

Furthermore which compiler-suite served as so long so good in the "dark" pre-LLVM ages?

Biting the hand, which feeds you comes to mind...

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#276

Post by belorn »

fleitz wrote: post #248
belorn wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me just say that your comment sound as Hitler, and we can be done with Association fallacies altogether. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy

I must thank you, I'm kind of flattered you think I'm that charismatic. Sorry about the charismatic way I presented my views, perhaps I should have mentioned my penchant for eating the raw uncooked flesh of freshly slain animals to make it more clear as to whether I was intending to advocate views similar to Hitler. You may want to look into these links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_persuasion

Im sorry, my subtle way of apparently was too subtle. I was not comparing you to Hitler, but rather made an association fallacy in order to create an irrelevant association.

If there was any persuasion in it, it was to not use irrelevant association since it do not add anything beyond a appeal to emotion, spun around a fallacy. Hitler, like George Bush, creates a guilt by association while the association is irrelevant tied to the subject matter.

The result thus becomes a polite discussion around the more creative ways of eating meat.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#277

Post by kevin_bauer »

gress wrote: post #259
slurry wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RMS had a pretty testy interview with Z magazine a few years back. Was very emphatic that his vision of the future included businesses, and swatted down several attempts by the Z people, who wanted to abolish all businesses, to get him to reconsider. Not bringing this up to argue that RMS is correct or reasonable (here or elsewhere), but I just thought it was interesting. RMS may be an unrealistic utopian, but his un…

Property rights for everyone except software developers.

If your freedom/rights takes the freedom/rights of others away, what may you argue about, if your freedom/rights is also taken away?

Because something might be inconvenient to you, it doesn't make it automatically wrong. There's a distinct line between free as in freedom and free as in arbitrariness. The former comes with responsibilities, the later without.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#278

Post by belorn »

gress wrote: post #250
nly wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My job involves creating non-free software. > But it strikes me as ironic that RMS talks about "freedom" when really he's advocating restricting your freedom to use the software. 1. The GPL isn't restricting your freedom, your employer is. You are working under contract terms and policy selected by your employer. Your preferences aren't relevant. 2. The GPL isn't restricting your employer from using the software, j…

The GPL is absolutely restricting what people do with software. To say otherwise is a lie.

No. Users of GPL software are under the right to be left alone if they want to modify or share the program. The developer who want to add restrictions on the program is the one who infringe on the users right.

Re: Richard Stallman - Re: clang vs free software

#280

Post by lstamour »

chris_j wrote: post #244
epistasis wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That Konquerer was GPL was the single advantage it had over anything else. This is simply not true, and if it were, you'd be implying that Apple chose Konquerer over Mozilla because they preferred GPL to MPL. In reality, Konquerer had a much cleaner architecture that Apple thought they had a better chance of adapting to OS X. The GPL had nothing to do with any of these events, the key feature was open source, not GP…

I interpret geocar's point as being that the (L)GPL is the reason that Apple had to contribute the improvements that they made to Konqueror/KHTML back to the community in the form of WebKit: sure, they chose KHTML because of its technical merits but, having done so, they were obliged to make their improvements to the LGPL code available under the same license, thus allowing Google to use it in Chrome.

Actually, in the Debug podcast, it was revealed that they were going to go with Mozilla's effort and all that held them back was that KHTML was so much simpler to explain, though the simplicity was something it lost in rewrites. WebKit, regardless of original License, was likely going to be open source either way just as Darwin was even without the License requirement. The point here is that non-free uses inside OS X helped rather than hindered the development of KHTML software. By non-free I refer less to the availability of source code as to how copyright around branding forces a schism for normal folks between Chrome/Safari and WebKit/Blink projects. Few will download or trust a silver WebKit experimental build or blue Chromium over their official variants, particularly if functionality is crippled because of the lack of proprietary extensions that would normally ship or easily integrate. Sometimes FSF users simply aren't "the rest of us," which is why it's normal to have competing licenses. I hope this encourages both projects to become more active developing end-user appreciable features, though perhaps I'm more pragmatic that way.
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